Salesforce Order Management guide
What Salesforce Order Management does after checkout, from routing and inventory to returns and service, and what to decide before you start.
Order Management is the part of Salesforce Commerce Cloud that handles what happens after a customer places an order: deciding where it ships from, tracking fulfilment, managing changes and returns, and helping service teams answer "where is my order?".
What it is for
Once you sell through more than one channel or ship from more than one location, orders get complicated. Order Management gives you one place to see and manage orders, whatever channel they came from, and connects that view to stock levels, stores, warehouses and customer service.
Core capabilities
Order Management capabilities
| Capability | What it does | Release noted by Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Order lifecycle management | Capture, change, cancel and return orders | Core |
| Agentic Order Routing | AI-assisted decisions on where to fulfil orders | Spring '26 |
| Inventory visibility | See available stock across locations | Core |
| Unified omnichannel inventory | One view of inventory across channels | Winter '27 |
| Order on Behalf Of | Staff place orders for customers | Core |
| Store associate app | Store staff handle orders and fulfilment | Core |
How it connects with other Salesforce products
- B2C Commerce and B2B Commerce send orders in after checkout.
- Service Cloud agents see order status and can process changes or returns in context.
- Marketing Cloud sends shipping and delivery updates; see our transactional email via API blueprint.
- Warehouse, ERP and carrier systems handle physical fulfilment and accounting, so integrations matter.
- Data 360 can combine order history with other customer data.
Who it suits
Retailers and brands selling across web, stores, marketplaces or call centres, especially those offering options such as ship-from-store or click-and-collect. If you sell from a single warehouse through one site, your commerce platform's built-in order handling may be enough at first.
Planning an implementation
- Order sources. List every channel that creates orders and the format each uses.
- Routing rules. Write down how you choose a fulfilment location today: stock, distance, cost and capacity.
- Inventory source of truth. Decide which system owns stock levels and how often it updates.
- Returns and exchanges. Agree policies and how refunds connect to payments and finance.
- Service experience. Decide what service agents and store staff can change.
Common mistakes
- Designing routing rules on paper without testing them against real order history.
- Unreliable inventory feeds, which turn smart routing into missed promises.
- Leaving returns until after launch.
- Not monitoring integrations, so failed order messages go unnoticed. Our platform events article covers one way to decouple systems.
How GeekMidst can help
Our Salesforce integration services cover connections to warehouse, ERP and carrier systems. We can design order service processes as part of Service Cloud implementation, and our testing and QA work helps prove routing and returns before go-live.
Questions we hear
Is Order Management part of Commerce Cloud?
What is Agentic Order Routing?
Can store staff use it?
Do we need Order Management if we have an ERP?
Related reading
B2C Commerce guide
Consumer storefronts on Commerce Cloud
→Service Cloud guide
Order service in context
→Transactional email via API
Order and shipping notifications
→Retail on Salesforce
Patterns for multi-channel retailers
→Sources
Untangling your order flow?
Tell us about your channels, locations and systems, and we will help you map a practical order management design.
